Scenic I-40 Drive on Route 66 in Arizona

This Sunday Drive is all about the drive and the stops you can make. If you start at Flagstaff and head east, you’ll see some pretty neat places along the highway! We took this trip from Phoenix back to Flagstaff in less than a day! Here are our top 5 stops along the I-40.

2 Guns

This ghost town is the first stop on your drive, right off the freeway. You’ll see signs and you’ll be able to drive the whole thing. It’s a pretty popular spot so you really don’t have to worry about it being eerily quiet. I tried doing some research on the history and it seems that this was first made famous by a famous battle between the Apache and Navajo. It was later turned into a stop along Route 66 with an overnight campsite, gas station and even a mountain lion zoo.

Meteor Crater

Meteor Crater is the visual result of a collision between an asteroid traveling 26,000 miles per hour and planet Earth approximately 50,000 years ago.

Visiting this site is a little pricey at $18 per adult.

Winslow

Unless you’ve lived under a rock, you should be pretty familiar with the Eagles song Take it Easy with the famous line “Standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona….”. If you stop in Winslow, you will in fact see a corner in dedicated to the Eagles!

While you are there, take a stroll and enjoy some lunch or ice cream!

Holbrook

If you have seen the movie Cars, you’ll recognize this place immediately. The movie was inspired by many things along Route 66 including the Wigwam. In Cars, it’s called the Cozy Cone! Here you’ll get to see how Route 66 looked years ago when it was the main highway.

Petrified Forest

It may seem silly to go look at old trees but these trees date back millions of years and have fossilized into beautiful rock formations. There are plenty of places to stop along the roadway that runs through here to do some short hikes through the trees.

If you have a National Park America the Beautiful Annual Pass, entrance is included!

Painted Desert

This is one of those places that you have to see in person because pictures just don’t do it justice. When the sun moves over the painted desert, the colors in the layers of the rock make the views incredible. To access this, you can start on I-40 or what we did was head through Holbrook on the E-180 and started our journey through the Petrified Forest..

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Welcome to CleverPinkPirate.com! I'm Sara and I live in Phoenix, AZ. I share a little bit of everything here including frugal family travel, easy recipes, and budget friendly DIY projects! You can find out more about me here.